CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA 2010!!!!!

If you read one post this year....read this.

Ever since I forged my first list in 2002 (handwritten and illegible, with the Count of Monte Cristo coming out on top), one of my greatest and most pathetic pleasures has been the end-of-year ranking of and reflecting upon the films that came into being over the past 12 months. These year is no different, but, before I start with the orgiastic overpraise, I've got one last sentimental nugget for the year that will soon be "last year". It was my first full year of blogging, and, looking back, either my writing improved considerably or my standards for myself have lowered incalculably. Though I'd keep watching and writing about the movies even if I was trapped in an Alaskan teepee with a faulty wireless and no friends, the fact is that its you, faithful nation of readers, the instill in me the drive to do more betterer. How? By simply reading. Thank you. Also, since I'm fairly good friends with damn near everyone who reads this, I'd like to offer my immeasurable thanks for your compassion, loyalty, and, most of all, patience. It's a year that's been rough and rewarding in equal measure, but, thanks to you guys, I felt loved every step of the way. Barbra said it best; "May all your storms be weathered, and all that's good get better." I love you all! Happy New Year.

(Halloween 2010. Alvy Singer.)

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Roger Ebert summed it up best-"it was not a great year for films, but many great films were released." Instead of the deluge of minor masterworks we've had over the past few years, this was a year of almost constant mediocrity, coupled with a few MAJOR heavy-hitters. I'd consider my top 3 choices to be flat-out classics, worthy of the very best TCM marathons. In short, the bad was abundant, but the good was so good that it damn near made it worth enduring all the the shite. And so, without further ado, Cinema Extravaganza 2010....or, the official title;

THE ANNUAL END OF DECEMBER CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA THAT I EAGERLY AWAIT ALL YEAR INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING ATTRACTIVE, PRODUCTIVE, OR SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BYAAAAAAA!!!

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THE BEST FILMS OF 2010:

Runner Up: The Book of Eli

With The Matrix movies in the rearview mirror as the new cinematic decade dawned, we desperately needed a new studio film to shoot us through with adrenaline while serving up a hearty feast for our craniums. The Hughes Brothers, making a slam-bang return after a decade-long hiatus, provided one with this exhilarating ass-whup marathon that doubles as a serious examination of religious corruption. As Denzel Washington's titular character guards the last copy of the Bible on a journey through a brilliantly rendered, contagiously ominous nuclear wasteland, we come to understand the truly dangerous power of misbegotten faith, a concept all too relevant to our Tea Party reality. Before the credits roll there's a possible set-up for a sequel, and for once, I say bring it on.

10. Scott PIlgrim vs. the World

It came off as a guilty pleasure in the trailers, but, to paraphrase Queen Babs, nothin' to be guilty of here; this one's a masterpiece of craft, an invigorating entertainment that tweaks the conventions of event pics while getting you hooked on its Pixie-Stick energy. Michael Cera's turn as a Canadian mensch whose new GF comes with some sword-toting, grudge-bearing baggage centers the film and gives it just the right touch of earnest soulfulness, and, behind the camera, director Edgar Wright matches his boffo work on Shaun of the Dead. Cheeky references to video games, indie bands, and 00's trends abound, but what pumps through this one's veins is an unbridled love of the movies. Plus, it's got the best line of the year by far; "He punched the highlights out of her hair!"

9. 127 Hours

Danny Boyle is as good a manipulator of space as we've ever had work a camera; the guy can make the inside of a toilet into an endless underworld, and an expansive Juhu slum into a straitjacket; thus, the guy was the perfect choice for this true-story thriller about Aron Ralston (James Franco), a hiker forced to cut off his own arm when pinned to the bottom of a crevice by a stray boulder. He conveys the claustrophobia of Aron's cloistered quarters, but also invents wildly evocative imagery to display the emotional expansiveness of his hero's thought process. Franco expertly conveys the complexities of a man in the process of stripping away his own hubris, and Boyle's two ace cinematographers capture the beauty and terror of his surroundings; this is a giant, graceful trust fall between actor and director. As for those ripping the picture because it provides only sideways glances at Mr. Ralston's life prior to the incident, I fart in their general direction; this movie is in no way a biography, but instead something a hundred times more original...a study of what drives the human mind to produce such tremendous amounts of courage.

8. The King's Speech

"Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all", Winston Churchill once said. I think he'd be proud, then, of this efficient, crowd-pleasing chronicle of his compatriots, which takes a series of simple, done-and-done-again plot points and relays them to us with such consummate sincerity that we feel as if we're seeing them for the first time. Tom Hooper triumphantly told the story of Queen Elizabeth I in one of my favorite television mini-series of all time, and he brings the same attention to detail and utter lack of pretension to the proceedings here. Despite the sturdy ensemble and embarrassment of technical riches, what really makes The King's Speech tick are the scenes between Colin Firth's Duke of York and Geoffrey Rush's Lionel Logue, the Australian actor who helps him undo his speech impediment; their precisely tuned, deeply felt duet is a how-to exhibit for aspiring performers everywhere.

7.The Ghost Writer

After years at work on a succession of solid period dramas, the legendary Roman Polanski is back in thriller mode, but his years in across-the-pond exile have caused him to alter his directorial tone; out is the flickering-neon American seediness evident in Chinatown, and in is a distinctly European shade of gloomy ennui. But it's a change that works wonders for this phenomenally told tale of a biographer (Ewan McGregor) encountering a good deal more trouble than he expected when he signs on to ghost-author the biographer of a controversial politico (Pierce Brosnan, absolutely on fire here). Blending neo-noir with character study, and placing considerable emphasis on the particulars of his dreary setting, the director keeps us so fascinated with the constantly shifting geographical and emotional surroundings that we don't even notice the rug being carefully pulled out from under us; like the motorcyclist that mugs McGregor in the knockout opening minutes of the movie, this one sneaks up on you. Put Polanski's brush with arrest earlier this year out of your mind when experiencing The Ghost Writer, and you'll find an excellent piece of work from a man exhilarated by his artistic freedom.

6.The Social Network

I mean, what can be said about this one that hasn't already been said? Or that I haven't said in my drooling prior post a few months ago? Suffice to say that David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin have taken a single topic and expanded it to encompass our entire modern world, creating a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions and filling it with a cast of across-the-board dynamite soon-to-be-stars. A masterful exploration of who we are and what we are up to in our post-Y2K years.

5. Tiny Furniture

A spiritual successor to The Graduate, imbued with dialogue sharp enough to give Tina Fey an orgasm, this sterling indie flawlessly captures the feeling of interior inertia you get during those sprawled-out, in-between stretches of life. In a world where low-budget films tend to be cutesy exercises in mumblecore narcissism, first-time writer/director Lena Dunham startles with her frankness, particularly in her astoundingly astute rendering of a frayed mother-child dynamic. In her debut, she displays an uncanny cameraman's eye, a poet's ear, and the ceaselessly compassionate heart of a true artist. I didn't trumpet another film harder this year, and I'm proud to say that's the case.

4.Toy Story 3

Don't shank me, but, I think, in our desperation to find quality entertainment in the dog days of perhaps the worst May in movie history, we hailed a helluva cinematic good samaritan as the Messiah. With a repeat viewing, it becomes apparent that TS3 is not quite as good as the first picture, but it's better than the second, and Pixar more than delivers on the glorious promise of emotional maturity and intellectual incisiveness that they made with Up. Slyly playing on our innate connection to toys (hell, to these toys), the picture uses the guise of a fiendishly entertaining prison-break plot to explore the theme of saying goodbye to childhood. By providing a definitive ending to one of the definitive series of our time, Lee Unkrich, John Lasseter and co. remind us of the cathartic value of closure in both our moviegoing and homemaking lives; they also ensure that a generation of kids will be taking as many toys to college as possible.

3. The Fighter

In my life, I have loved exactly three sports films; Hoosiers, Any Given Sunday, and now this stirring smash about a a Boston boxer (Mark Wahlberg) torn between his domineering family and a shot at in-the-ring gold. These movies don't transcend the stereotypes of the genre; they make them irrelevant by putting the focus on the players, not the game, so that by the end we don't just want these people to win one bout; we want them to be happy and healthy for all eternity. David O. Russell has created a layered, lacerating depiction of a twisted, toxically prideful family, while not denying us the snap-crackle-pop electricity of a few damn good fight scenes; he's made a boxing picture that's less about battered bones and more about bruised souls. A flawless, fiercely talented cast sinks their teeth into a feast prepared by a cinematic master chef, and the result is a mainstream marvel for which the word "visceral" was invented.

2. Rabbit Hole

Loss is different for every family, and for every member of that family; it's a simple message, butRabbit Hole relays it with such raw, testifying power that it feels like a tear-stained epiphany. David Lindsay-Abaire has brought his stage drama of the same name (one of my personal favorites) to the screen with none of the typical boxed-in, teleplay feel you often get from adaptations, and John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame does a tonal 360, displaying a heretofore unseen knack for shaping serious performances and manipulating a camera with unforced grace. The genius of the picture is its understanding that grief, in any capacity, isn't tidy; instead of using the theme of death as a clothesline on which to hang a plot, it presents us with a series of piercing, vivid, often darkly funny vignettes that probe the mysteries of the human psyche while engaging in an unsentimental celebration of its incomparable strength. As a husband and wife grieving over the four-year-old they lost in a freak accident, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart, both giving the best and most unaffected performances of their entire careers, anchor the film beautifully, while Dianne Wiest makes a welcome comeback as Kidman's lush of a mother, and Miles Teller breathes a resonant vitality into the demanding role of the teenager who caused the fatal incident. This is a shining example of cinema fulfilling its highest purpose, using all the visual, aural, and emotional resources at its disposal to forge a passionate inquiry into issues that really matter; more to the point, this is probably the best movie ever made about the loss of a child.

And my pick for the BEST FILM OF 2010

is....

is.....

ISSSSSSSSSSS....................

1. Inception

When The Dark Knight hit theaters, it was Woodstock, it was the Super Bowl, it was an all-stops-out event that rode a wave of deafening critical and commercial hosannas all the way to the bank. Looking back, it's not the film we thought it was, and that's not an insult--it's still probably the best superhero film ever made, but those who hailed it as a psychodrama, character study, or post-9-11 parable simply got a bit too excited; the psychological theories bandied about here are well-known to a high schooler, the characters are more or less commendably well-drawncaricatures, and just because the film plugged into America's zeitgeist doesn't mean it diagrammed the country's angst. In short, TDK remains a damn good piece of inventive popcorn entertainment, but I think within a few months we all knew we'd overhyped it just a bit. Inceptionhad the opposite effect; in the minds of many (including this wannabe Yid-critic), it mushroomed from a gotta-see-it-twice hot-months phenom into a bona fide masterpiece that stands as the best science fiction film made in my lifetime.

Christopher Nolan should be lauded for creating a dazzlingly intricate maze the likes of which we've never seen on screen before, but his true triumph lies in creating a string of fully imagined, thrillingly complex characters to comprise his team of dream-thieves; the massive labyrinth of the plot would amount to nothing if we weren't presented with people whom we were willing to follow through it. Make no mistake about it; while the film shines in every regard, from the flawless performances (DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard deserve Oscar attention they sadly won't get) to the seamless special effects, this is Nolan's victory. He's effortlessly straddled the line between bang-bang pulp and thinking-man's prestige, providing an extremely well-done popcorn picture for those who just want their adrenaline fix, and a truly compelling allegory for those who'd like to get their brains into the game, too.

The fact is, when you peel away the bajillions of different dream levels and the fun-house mirror streets and the totems and the Edith Piaf song and the zero-gravity fights, Inception is really about the cinema itself. Filmmakers, much like Dom Cobb and his dream thieves, have the dangerous ability to plant ideas in our heads-through their work, they can exaggerate fantasies about getting the girl, further inflame pre-existing prejudices about beliefs, cultures, and events, or even, in some cases, start entirely new social networks, be they protest groups or midnight-movie clubs.

It's an action movie by Fellini, a philosophical manifesto by John Woo. Ah, fuck the comparisons. It's in a category all too itself. A crackingly good event movie, an accomplished feat of storytelling, an expedition into our intellect, the proof positive that Christopher Nolan will be one of the iconic auteurs of the new millennium, and a cautionary tale that reminds artists of the remarkable power and responsibility that comes with being granted unconditional access to our dreams. BRAAAAAAAAAAAHM!!!!

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Performances of the Year:

Female:

Lead: Hye-Ja Kim, Mother-If 2009 was the year of comedy warhorses like Mo'nique and Sandra Bullock trading wish-upon-a-star escapism for raw (or, in Bullock's case, "raw") naturalism, 2010 found actresses respected for their restraint diving into their inner diva for a series of galvanizing, highly dramatic performances that played like berserk but intricately choreographed tightrope dances, with the dancer never too far away from the precarious flaming pit of parody. Halle Berry, Natalie Portman and Jacki Weaver all hit grand-slams with their unflinching portrayals of women on the verge, but for me, this years standout in the seemingly never-ending parade of dauntless dames was Hye Ja-kim, South Korea's favorite leading lady and star of Boon Jong-Ho's Mother. As the mother of a mentally retarded boy framed for a rare murder in a quiet Korean province, Ja-Kim singlehandedly carries a film often in danger of collapsing under the weight of its self-imposed avant-garde wonkiness. Initially off-putting in its bruising bluntness, the complexity-and, indeed, the genius-of this performance reveals itself as the plot thickens, and by the end of the film we come to know this woman, and to understand her tragedy; the abundance of love that runs through her veins does so not as a virtue, but as a venom.

Supporting: Melissa Leo, The Fighter-Take off your hats folks, and pay your respects to the most underrated actress working in Hollywood today. After years of dynamite work in cable TV (Treme) and indie cinema (Confess, Frozen River), she broke into the mainstream this year with an indelibly truthful, uninhibited performance as the aggressively domineering mother-manager of two Beantown boxers. She takes an often unforgivably barbarous woman and makes us fear, hate, pity, and understand her all at once, showing us buried reserves of jealousy and desperation without ever explaining her actions verbally; rarely have a pair of eyes said so much. Leo: A fitting surname for a woman whose feral intensity, unwavering self-possession, and guileless emotional honesty have catapulted her to commercial success at last, and had damn well better send her to the Kodak stage this Oscar season.

Male:

Lead: Jesse Eisenberg,The Social Network-Portraying detachment ain't easy. You have to give off the impression of a person who's constructed a dam around their soul, yet also convey to us the magnitude of what's building up behind it. Eisenberg finds just the right note of icy dissonance here, firing shrapnel from the corners of his slackened mouth, but letting hangdog hurt and childish neediness leak out of his eyes. In its very lack of hugeness, it is monumental.

Supporting: Christian Bale, The Fighter-Ever since his apocalyptic Terminator freak-out, we all knew there was a volcanic mania in Bale, waiting patiently to erupt; here, playing a washed-up pugilist and cocaine addict, he puts his inbred craziness to work, exuding a nervous energy that really sears the screen. This is such a committed, crackling portrayal that you half-expect the character to be panhandling on the street when you walk out of the theatre. It's a performance that hinges around the infinite subtleties of human body language; when his character experiences a major epiphany, notice how he responds not with words, but with movement, and how that movement is so clear and certain and true that it's as if he'd just let loose with a five-page monologue. There's no surer thing at the Oscars this year.

Director:

Danny Boyle, 127 Hours-Most films seem made; Danny Boyle's work appears to spontaneously spew out from the depths of his giddy, unchained imagination, rarely moreso than in his latest creative output. While his qualifications are perfect for adapting the Aron Ralston story, what helps him bring a possibly cliche incident successfully to the silver screen is what he lacks: any hint of lugubriousness or self-consciousness, and a fear of substantial risk-taking.

Cinematographer:

Matthew Libatique, Black Swan-Ever since Requiem For A Dream, Darren Aronofsky's been fascinated with the demands the human psyche impinges on the body in its ill-advised quest for perfection, and here, ace lenser Libatique mounts of army of handheld cameras to serve his director's vision. Diving, ducking, and bobbing around the dancers with the kind of wiry intensity generally reserved for action pictures, he reminds us that, while ballet is all lotus-blossom grace on the outside, it's also an internal inferno, with each stretch of the ligament and arch of the bone nothing less than a small, hard-won miracle.

Score:

Trent Reznor, The Social Network-Steiner and Tiomkin would roll over in their graves if they heard these cuts, all heavy on electronic instrumentation and light on propulsive dramatic energy. But, in the context of the movie, Reznor's work, especially the spare, six-note piano melody that serves as the movie's central motif, is just right; brilliant, beautiful, sad, and slightly removed...just like The Social Network's haunted, haunting anti-hero.

Screenplay:

Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network-Yes, there's an unusual verbal fecundity to be found in this screenplay-you almost wonder if the characters have to speak so fast so that they can fit all these great lines in-but the screenwriter never once mistakes quantity for quality, letting loose when needed but also well aware of the infinite value of silence and simplicity; for me, the most affecting, unforgettable line in the picture is a mere two words long; "It's raining." Because of Sorkin's conductor's sense of energy, tension, noise, release, rhythm and motion, this line, and every other one big or small, sings.

Filmic Fails:

Alice in Wonderland-This joins Nine and the last two Ocean's flicks as one of the great missed opportunities of the new millennium. But while those movies sputtered shamefully to the finish line by making use of their few precious joules of star wattage, this shoulda-been-great melding of Lewis Caroll and Tim Burton's psycho psyches is dead in the water from scene one, thanks to its oppressively gloomy production design, half-assed attempts at Narnia-esque sword n' shield banging, and shockingly dim-witted script, which strips the story of all its ubiquitous prepubescent awe by warping the titular character into a sexually frustrated, chronically whiny china-doll teen. Day by day I hate it more, so much so that I wrote a detailed deconstruction of the thing as one of my college essays.

I Am Love-Look up pretension in the dictionary and you'll find either some pictures of certain people from my synagogue or the post for this arsty-fartsy mess. Best known around Hollywood as Tilda Swinton's pet project (she produces and stars), I Am Love makes an appallingly shabby attempt to camouflage a soapy wreck of a story (woman discovers daughter is a lesbian, starts experimenting herself) with ardently extravagant photography, ritzy wardrobes, and the most obnoxious music this side of Bjork's worst releases. At least in between the almost comically random lingering shots of food, facial expressions, furniture, shop windows, and foliage, the filmmakers manage to sprinkle in a couple of lengthy sex scenes; incompetently photographed, yes, but they keep you awake.

2, 4, 6, 8, This Is How We Overrate:

The Kids Are All Right-Look, I have absolutely nothing against homosexuality-Jesus, this is the guy who picked Brokeback Mountain as the best film of the past 10 years! But I'm no fan of this wife-and-wife domestic dramedy; here's a film that takes slightly above average material, salts it with liberal doses of topicality, and then demands that we love it. The cast is uniformly strong (Bening's radiant lionness-in-early-winter work indeed merits a little awards attention), but whatever work they do is in service of a fundamentally flawed script; for two hours, the movie hammers home the legitimate but ball-numbingly obvious message that same-sex partners deal with marital strife, too. The kids are all right, I suppose, but, in this case, the buzz is all wrong.

Never Let Me Go-A true disappointment for a Mark Romanek fan like myself, this underwritten and overdirected sci-fi adaptation about three youngsters swapping beds and shedding tears in the aftermath of a life-limiting, world-widening discovery slathers author Kazuo Ishiguro's simple prose with a generous and wholly unnecessary glaze of arthouse pretension; too often this picture uses ambient music and designed to the nth-degree camera angles to disguise gaping holes in character development and simple logic. Only Carey Mulligan prevails, taking the few grace notes afforded her in the role and whipping up a virtuoso's symphony of keening loneliness and hot-blooded confusion; too little, too late.

Won't You Please Remember Me?:

It's Kind of A Funny Story-Cliches are a bit like Liza Minelli; marry them to the right people and they can really work. In that vein, any wrung-out platitude or fatigued plot point should plotz with gratitude to land in the able hands of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who have speedily established a solid reputation for successfully making the old new again, and do so once again with this refreshingly unprepossessing chronicle of blossoming teen-luv in an asylum. Everything from the performances to the score to the look of the thing is pleasingly understated yet carefully designed, and even if the darker aspects of the story are occasionally subject to some unsavory PG-13-ification, the emotions that are on display are as real as it gets.

Poster of the Year

Trend of the Year: Leo's Relationship Fails (SPOILERFEST!)

Let us recount; after marrying a manic depressive mess in 2008's Revolutionary Road, he got hitched to a deranged child-killer in Shutter Island, followed by a suicidal dream-temptress inInception. At least he outlived his beloveds in his most recent go-rounds-remember, Jack Dawson wasn't so lucky. Plus, things are looking up for L-D-Cap. As the titular character in The Great Gatsby, he finally nets his true love....oh....wait.....

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Questions? Comments? Fury that Burlesque didn't make an appearance on my list? Comment away. Hell, make a list of your own. Sayonara, my friends. And onward to 2011!

10 from '10: Moments

These last two weeks of the year provide a multitude of opportunities for me to let my drooly sentimentality and migraine-inducing writerly energy run rampant and unchecked. No, this article isn't about the moviefilms, which will get some supreme lovin' next week, when I post my ANNUAL END OF DECEMBER CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA THAT I EAGERLY AWAIT ALL YEAR INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING ATTRACTIVE, PRODUCTIVE, OR SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BYAAAAAAA!!!

However, this post is less about evaluating the merits of Jesse Eisenberg or discussing the budding career of that renaissance boi, Biebs. No pop culture here; this post is about ten moments, big and small that I was a part of this year. I do this mainly for myself, so that, when I'm 80, drooling, still unmarried, and coping with the knowledge that I did indeed outlive Barbra Streisand, I'll be able to recall the details of the madness that was my childhood. This one's also about gratitude. If I write six paragraphs thanking a man I've never met for a movie he doesn't even know I've seen (ohai, Woodmeister), the least I can do is throw some metaphorical roses to those who've impacted my life in a more immediate way. Here goes:

10 Misty Water-Colored Memories:
10. Dead And Alive: Playing the paterfamilias wouldn't seem to be my cup of tea, but I was nonetheless cast as a distinguished gray in my school's production of Frankenstein. As Papa Frankenstein, I outlived my son, so we blocked the entire show as a flashback through my old-fart eyes, with me ruffling through my kid's diaries, lab reports, baby books, etc. That was when I realized something; though the script didn't say the words "Herr Frankenstein dies", I did in fact spend the final scene unconscious. In a burning building. Alone. I went up to our director, and kindly informed him that, unless someone had called the fire brigade, I was, in fact, quite dead. He furrowed his brow, straightened his tie, and said; "Let me think....no, you're fine. NO. Wait. Yeah. You're dead. We need to adjust your blocking accordingly." Only in the theatre, kids.

9. Welcome to the War Room: Infuriated that Blockbuster didn't have a copy of Kick-Ass (later I found out this was because that film didn't hit shelves for another 8 weeks), I picked up this Kubrick masterpiece on a lark. I planned to watch a short snippet to see if I liked what I saw, then write an essay. Needless to say, the Microsoft Word cursor had to hold the phone for two glorious hours, while Merkin Muffley, Buck Turgidson, and the good Doctor himself (heil!) did a tap dance on my funny bone and a dizzying waltz around my psyche. An exhilarating experience that reminded me why I love the movies.

8. Shalom, Sayonara: Hanukkah's always been an odd holiday for me; we've never been able to convince our Baptist half of the family to sit around the Menorah, our brothers and sisters in Streisand have their own holiday plans, and the few temple-goers I keep in touch with are solid acquaintances, nothing more. This year, I made a radical decision; invite some Catholic school kids to a night of Dreidel spinning, Latke munching, and, apparently, shimmying and shaking to the early hits of the Beatles. I was initially ambivalent about the idea (as was Mama Walker), but I ultimately saw just how perfect it was; in a life that's been all about the mastery of blending beliefs (have you met my family?), exposing a couple Christmas-light hangers to my religious tradition was the perfect way to say goodbye to my Hanukkahs at home.

7. Caffeine Scene-I am at Cindi's. I am tired and delusional after a long day at school. On a whim, I order coffee for the first time in my life. An eternal love affair begins. Speaking of coffee shop nights...

6. A Special Kind of People...: At the risk of sounding conceited, I guess I should probably tell you that I was the first person in the state of Texas to play the role of Lt. Frank Cioffi, one of the most demanding ever penned for a Kander-and-Ebb musicals, in my school's production of Curtains. The part itself? Looking back, I cringe at the realization of how much I overplayed it all, though I am proud of certain individual moments (my last scene with Belling, that vein-popping, mile-a-minute final monologue that ties the show together), but there are still two things I'll value about this show forever. There's the boys dressing room, by far the most fun of any I've ever called home for two hours every night; in addition to the brolicious camaraderie, they was a genuine and overwhelming love for showbiz, summed up best by our ritualistic pre-show hoedown to the Chicago soundtrack each night. But for me, the real thrill of the show was that, because the chorus was onstage 98% of the time, and I was onstage 99%, in a roundabout way, I got to play opposite every single one of my castmates. It's a privilege I'll be eternally grateful for; "I miss the music", indeed.

5. Lessons to Be Learned: So we're at Jew-party (oxymoron much?), and a few of my parents friends decide to ride the pretension horse, culminating in a lengthy discussion about Marxist philosophy and legal mumbo-jumbo that wasn't exactly welcome territory for an insurance-man-turned-photographer and florist-turned-schoolteacher. I felt awful for both my parents, who were basically put out to sea while a bunch of lawyers and doctors talked shop. Does all that bother you?, I asked Papa Walker on the way home. 'They know more than I do when it comes to those topics", he said. "I know more than they do about, say, how to light someone or airbrush a blemish. That's just how it goes." Yet another reminder of the thing I admire most about my father, a quality I hope to imbibe by proximity; his ability to marry unshakable confidence with refreshing unpretentiousness.

4. State Fail: Another parental memory. We're in rural Ohio, mid-CollegeQuest 2010. My appointment with the Oberlin admissions staff is it 9:15. It is 9:10. The rickety rental Oldsmobile is galumphing down the asphalt. My dad is eating a banana while steering with one hand, his go-to late-for-an-important-date food choice. He's giving the gas pedal some pretty generous love. My mom is huffing while slapping him on the shoulder repeatedly, my personal favorite of her many nervous habits. Somewhere in this Dante's Inferno of a morning, a cop pulled us over for doing 80 in a 60. "Let me see your license", he asks. My dad pulls it out. The cop looks it over. "Oh. From Texas, I see?" "Yes." "Ya'll drive like idiots down there. You don't know no better. Keep driving, but drive like the rest of America does, 'kay?" Truth=stranger than fiction.

3. The Magic Schoolbus: I can't describe this bus ride, nor do I remember much of it-you'd think I'd been drinking heavily or something. What I can say is that in the 4 hours it took a small group of my theatre friends and I to get from our competition in Austin back to Dallas, something happened. Something besides faux-sexting competition, Queen sing-offs, heart-to-hearts, and sight-seeing ("adult video store on the left!"). The quiet, crucial realization that we'd never get tired of each other. Nothing terribly important happened externally on that bus. But I think, in the time it took us to sail from the Capital City to Le Big D, we all realized that we'd formed bonds that'd last well beyond graduation day.

2. The Good, The Bad, and the Prop Guns: Ah, Seven Keys to Baldpate. Dickens sums it up: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It was a nightmarish rehearsal process and demanding run, filled with prop malfunctions (murders are hard to commit with faulty guns), offstage catfighting, and almost supernaturally difficult blocking. It was a hugely gratifying show when we got it right, and the last couple of shows, we really got it right. It provided me with a role in which I never felt entirely comfortable. It provided me with a set of requirements that uncorked a slimier, more sinister side of me that I didn't know I could convey onstage. It seriously swayed my opinions of some. It was a merciless maelstrom of a piece that did something miraculous; it took an indescribably close group of people and made them even closer. From people I already considered my best friends, I found new reserves of compassion, integrity, and energy as we faced seemingly insurmountable odds. One of life's unique pleasures, and one this show provided in spades, is getting to know people better and, instead of uncovering flaws, finding even more to like.

1. The Jew's Speech: All false modesty aside, I honestly didn't think my senior retreat speech would go over very well. I mean, I wrote it in three hours on Yom Kippur Eve after listening to a sermon about Yehuda Amichai and feeling a faint lightbulb go off in the outskirts of my manbrain. I knew I'd hit something with that final line ("Boy Meets World" never goes out of style), but the rest looked like motivational mush to me. Imagine my surprise at the standing ovation(s). I won an award in front of the entire school earlier this year, but someone, this outpouring of love felt a hundred times more organic and a thousand times more enthusiastic. I hope I vomited a little love back, and that that vomit reached further than the front row. I'd laid a lot bare-my initial transfer-kid discomfort, my crazed religious heritage, and, potentially worst of all, my tear-stained gratitude to all those who inhabit the square footage known as the arts hallway. It's not hyperbole when I say that these people saved me, and I wanted to let that entire room know. For all of this unmanly mess to be greeted with resounding applause turbocharged my confidence as a writer, student, and human being. I am who I am. And apparently that's not such a bad thing. Building a speech around quotes was a willfully wacky idea, a rhetorical stone's throw. The ripples from that stone's throw resound to this day-I've formed at least eight major friendships as a result of comments I received about The Speech. Yet another quote sums it up best;
"Only connect."-EM Forster.
QUOTE OF THE YEAR:
"I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love."-Dave Eggers

10 from '10: Muzeek

For someone like me, who would gladly make a list at the drop of the hat (followed by a list of my favorite dropped hats), December truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Not because of communal outpouring of love and charity and stomach cramps and all that, but because we're at another marking period on the cultural calendar; it's time to put the artistic year in perspective, to look back upon what worked, what didn't, and what featured "and starring Cher" in the end credits. We begin with a look at this year's musical output. Now let's make one thing clear; though I'm a pretty decent singer, I can't tell a fermata from a frittata, so I'm eschewing any technical analysis when reviewing the works listed below. Instead, when choosing my 10 Favorite Albums from 2010, I looked for music that refused to let me be impartial; that, through some mixture of rhythm, melody, lyric, phrasing, production, and flat-out creative chutzpah got me out of my seat and into the game, stroking my figurative beard in deep-thought, wiping tears from eyes, or whipping my hair back and forth with youthful abandon. May this list also serve as a sizable helping of middle-finger to those who have my musical tastes pinned down to Barbra Streisand and her only equal, Barbra Streisand. I like that music them youngsters listen to as well. Plus, Barbra didn't release any new work this year.....bitches and hoes. Bitches and hoes. Anywho...

MAH TEN FAV'RIT ALBUMZ OF TWENNY TEN AH!!!:

10. Drake, Thank Me Later-Here's proof positive that you can blend hip-hop and bubblegum pop without dulling your aural edge. Thank Me Later is a rap album refreshingly free of anger and heavy-handed misogyny, one that presents its creator as a suave fly-by-nighter (the crushed-velvet synths of "Karaoke", the Prince-esque earnestness of "Find Your Love), albeit one with a dark side that rears its gloriously anarchic head in cuts like the sober-faced Nicki Minaj duet "Up All Night" and the inarguable highlight of the album, "Over", where Drake layers his partied-out paranoia over a thundering snare sample. The result is, like the rest of the album, both a product of and a good-natured jab at the world of hip-hop post-Hova."Karaoke"

9.Raya Yarbrough, December Songs-If the Raya Yarbrough that shows up on this sophomore effort isn't the stunning jazz songwriter showcased on her self-titled 2007 debut, that's a caveat I'm willing to dismiss when faced with such tremendous evidence of her skills as an ace interpreter. That silken voice soars on lushly rendered standards like "Midnight Sun" and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", and she shows off a newfound knack for cunning orchestration, placing 70's folk chestnut "River" and Danny Elfman curio "Sally's Song" in torch-ballad settings with resounding success. My advice to this burgeoning songbird: do what you're doing, only more often!

8. Robyn, Body Talk-If Stieg Larsson was Sweden's answer to Stephen King, Robyn is their resounding reply to all Americans going gaga over Gaga. All dancefloor requirements are more than satisfied; the beats are frequent and fat enough to tear through speakers, the choruses are unshakable, and every lyric is delivered in a teasing purr that all but sanctions prom-night hookups. Still, what makes the album stick is it's special dollop of darkness, the distinctly European melancholy present in spurned-sweet-pea anthems like "Dancing On My Own" and "Love Kills".

7.The National, High Violet-Unlike the above record, this is not a set of songs that begs to be blasted over a stereo. It's a sonically intoxicating set of buzzy, angular musical tone poems best appreciated when you're stewing in a dark room with your eyes closed and your headphones on (think Leonard Cohen, plugged in but mellowed out). Uberfans may fall victim to overpraise (one iTunes reviewer notes that "If a sphere were a sound, it would sound like this"....sweet life), but underestimating this consistently brilliant, wholly original group would be a much greater mistake, indeed. "Terrible Love"

6. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-Separating the man from the music is damn near impossible, especially on this sprawling album, where Kanye veers with whiplash intensity from ruthless self-flagellation to boozy boasts and back again. This one lacks the tight, one-grand-slam-after-another feeling of Late Registration. However, if that was his Abbey Road, this is his White Album, a melodically adventurous, dizzingly diverse, ideologically robust, occasionally overindulgent reminder of the fact that, for all his behavior both erratic and erotic, we keep returning to his work because, in terms of flow, of force, of sheer lyrical fire, Kanye's the greatest talent in his chosen genre today; to paraphrase the album's strongest cut, "no one man should have this much power."

5. Anthony D'Amato, Down Wires-Remember what a ramshackle riot Bob Dylan's first few albums were? How the guy penetrated the patriotic put-ons of our swiftly changing country and the nooks and crannies of his own aching heart with just a guitar, a harmonica, and an abundance of vicious verbosity-and seemed to be having a hella good time doing it? Well, some of the work on this compendium of socially conscious blues-rock rave-ups ("Ballad of the Undecided" and "Never Grow Old") is so great it actually approaches that same cathartic peak of ragged, throaty energy.

4. Local Natives, Gorilla Manor-If Fleet Foxes, David Byrne and George Harrison banded together and blessed us with a musical lovechild, the result would sound something like Gorilla Manor, an ebullient hybrid of angsty indie and jubilant Afropop that, before it is anything else, is an extremely generous helping of ear-candy. Nothing dissonant, spacey, or inaccessible to be found here-the hooks are clean and catchy, the harmonies subdued and sweet, and the lyrics endearingly cheeky ("Memory tells me that these times are worth working for..."). Some albums go notoriously well with addictive substances; this one is it's own addictive substance. "Airplanes"

3. Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back-Truly great songs sound as if they've been around forever. That was clearly the former Genesis singer's rationale when he was creating this esoteric but highly emotional collection of indie covers (Arcade Fire, Talking Heads) set to classical chamber orchestrations. The highly traditional presentation of these songs allows us to the heretofore unavailable privilege to experience Gabriel as a vocal interpreter instead of a pop performer; his voice, while not as supple as it once was, still drips with a deeply affecting mixture of vulnerability and hope, particularly in a surging version of Bon Iver's "Flume" that happens to be the only standalone track released this year that moved me to tears.

2. Aloe Blacc, Good Things-Ever since Amy Winehouse hit the charts, everyone and their cousin Vinny has been at work on a good ol' fashioned album of R&B. But Soul with a capital S is a unique quality you can't manufacture, so few of these efforts have really hit the spot. Blacc's prophetically titled debut is the exception to the rule, a traditionalist triumph that's as warm and satisfying as a plate full of soul food; wah-wah-meets-big-brass anthems like "I Need A Dollar" and "Hey Brother" would fit in effortlessly on an R&B compilation with the likes of Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye.

1. Anais Mitchell w/guests, Hadestown-If you read my blog on a regular basis, you've already seen me spill my love and my ink over Anais Mitchell's knockout concept album that re-tells the Orpheus legend against the volatile backdrop of Depression-era Lousiana. Suffice to say that Mitchell's the best songwriter of her generation, and guest artists like Ani DiFranco and Bon Iver invest her mystical, musing lyrics with every ounce of urgency they deserve. Worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as concept greats like Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt'. Pepper's, this boundary-bursting concoction is part zydeco, part folk, part rock, part soul, and all heart. Like all great albums, it takes you places. "Wedding Song"

"Tiny" Budget, Big Dreams.

If you're a film critic, or someone who creams their pants while reading film criticism, then you wait for it eagerly, every day, often consciously, occasionally years it a time. You fork over hefty chunks of change to piercing-prone, plaid-clad ticket-takers and sandwich yourself between the padded walls of the local arthouse theaters, waiting for this rare species of movie to rear its head. And you know when it does. You know from the minute it starts. I am talking about the proverbial cinematic dark horse, that fledgling indie that you feel obliged, nay, called upon to expose to a larger audience. Guess what, kids? I gots one.

The masterpiece in question is Tiny Furniture, a riotous, gloriously gutsy home movie that sticks a couple of untrained actors in the wildest of concrete jungles and lets them tear it apart with their raw talent. It's an absolute grand slam of a debut for writer/director Lena Dunham, whose exceptional way with words allows her to work wonders on a shoestring. But this film is so conceptually solid, so ruthlessly incisive, so fiercely compassionate, and so flat-out entertaining that I wouldn't deem it hyperbole to call it a triumph for the entire indie business. It's not a game-changer in any way, shape, or form, but it is a thrillingly accurate examination of the intricacies of human behavior, and as such, comes off as both of its time and timeless.

This one's about Aura (Lena Dunham), freshly graduated from Oberlin and slinking back home with only a film degree and a string of much-mocked YouTube videos to her name. At once intimidated and infuriated by her two remaining family members-chronically aloof earth-mother Siri (Laurie Simmons), and sister Nadine (Grace Dunham), a world-class poet who hates poetry-she seeks solace, or at least easy diversion, in a trio of fellow early-middle-aged rolling stones.

There's Jed (Alex Karpovsky), one of Aura's YouTube peers who's struck gold with a whacked-out performance art series called "Nietzschian Cowboy". There's Keith (David Call), an erudite local chef whose obsessions are Vicodin, casual sex, and Cormac McCarthy, in that order. And finally, her old friend Charlotte, a trampy European import who serves as both a frequently-bare shoulder to cry on and the dispenser of claws-out bons mots bitchy enough to give Regina George an O-face. Cheered on by Charlotte, Aura goes to work on seducing Keith...that is, until she lets Jed move in with her family as a favor. Love triangle? I think so.

Hardened cinephiles are rolling their eyes right about now. Based on the above summary, you'd expect the picture to go one of two ways. It could be A) a paint-by-the-numbers rom-com with a deficit of wit and a surplus of pop songs or B) a cloyingly pretentious, artier-than-thou indie that assembles soft-spoken hipsters and then sets them off on immaculately photographed bouts of mental masturbation.

Lucky for us, it's neither. It's a special breed all it's own- a wonderfully unique dramedy with all the endearing drollery of a Preston Surges movie, a generous helping of Allen-esque existential angst, and a dash of the feed-'em-to-the-dogs ruthlessness of recent minor classics like Heathers and Election. For a relative n00b in the director's chair, Dunham has an uncanny mastery of balance; she can do Tina Fey-worthy one-liners ("Hello. You look like the epilogue of Felicity"), and proves an expert assembler of knockout comic setpieces (by far the funniest "animal-in-the-house" episode since that Buick-sized spider in Annie Hall), but her real strengths lies in knowing that, while those features make a movie memorable, they do not make it good.

What's needed, even more than a story, are characters you can get behind. Just ask Jim Jarmusch or Jerry Seinfeld, strikingly diverse artists who forged highly successful careers by dropping strikingly original personalities into bare-bones plotlines. Here, Dunham's work suggests she could be a fellow Master of Nothing. Notice how, when summarizing the film, I included very few major plot points-there are really only four or five. What I spent alot of time on are the people, creations that pop with a real-life immediacy that gets rarer and rarer every movie season.

Dunham understands that people, by their nature, are contradictory, and conveys a sense of the human condition's frailty by establishing character traits until these people fly in the face of them. Nadine appears to be a stuck-up ubersnob, until she proffers an unexpectedly sweet response to something Aura says. We've put Jed in the sweet-but-scruffy category until the screenplay makes a daring decision involving his screen presence. And then there's Siri, who, after spending the entire movie in a state of out-to-lunch apathy, steps into the spotlight for a deeply haunting closing monologue that ends the proceedings on a note of mournful understanding and hard-earned wisdom. I don't need to analyze these scenes anymore. They stand alone. When you see the movie, they speak for themselves, and, more importantly, they speak to you.

So why do I like this movie so much? Why am I campaigning for it like few other indie pieces I've seen? Probably because it does something I've wanted the cinema to do for a good while. The Graduate was a perfect account of the 60's generation, of the between-this-and-that ennui that drove so many to turn on and drop out. On the threshold of maturity, they saw infinity roll out before them. They had all the time in the world but yet not concrete ambitions to fill it with. After the attack-and-natural-disaster prone 90's and 00's, something changed, I think.

The uncertainty was still there, but we gained a newfound urge to fill our time as much as possible-to take up X amount of jobs, X amount of AP classes, to apply to this many colleges, try this many things with that many lovers, explore all we wanted and latch onto some purpose in case the increasing random whims of the world wiped us away tomorrow. Instead of standing in buzzy bliss before the endlessness of time, we felt at its mercy. This movie captures that newfound restlessness with biting exactitude, especially in its beautiful final line. The Graduate is one of my all-time favorites, so a movie that may be the new-millennium equivalent of that tour de force certainly deserves my attention and unchecked praise.

One final screed: some are discounting Lena Dunham's efforts because the picture's based on her real life experiences-she's an Oberlin film grad, the picture was shot in her actual loft, and her real life mother and sister play her movie family-but I find it absurd that the picture's autobiographical nature is being tallied as a negative. It takes balls to put any fragment of your past up on screen, and we ought to praise Dunham for putting it on display for the sake of her art. But it doesn't matter whether this movie is real or fake, half-imagined or completely facutal; it's something better than any of the aforementioned qualities; honest. A.

PS. For those who won't bother to see the picture (it's available on cable On Demand, and headed to DVD-store shelves), I can't resist sharing my favorite line;

Partygoer: "I love your dress!"

Lena: "I think it screams 'I've been living in Ohio for four years, now take me back to your gross apartment and have sex with me!'....but....uh....thank you...."

TRAILER

Something Middling This Way Comes

As you know, I’m an avid supporter of indie film. Thus, I decided it appropriate to devote an entire post to one of the most underpublicized releases in many a moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I. But first, let’s wander down memory lane and examine its highly underrated predecessors, box-office flops all. Keep in mind that I’m wearing my movie critic cap at the moment, not my Hoggy-Hoggy-Hogwarts lovin’ Sorting Hat. For example, I can’t deny that the Prisoner of Azkaban movie spliced many a beloved scene, but it’d be downright unfair if I didn’t extol its expert manipulation of mood and impressively mature performances. In short, I’m reviewing what the filmmakers left in, not what they cut out. So, without further ado-

Sorcerer’s Stone-In hindsight, it’s clear that the Potter phenom was only in its infancy when this one hit theaters; that’s probably why this one gives off a faint whiff of flop sweat and lacks the distinctive stylistic sizzle that a Gilliam or Spielberg could’ve lent to the proceedings. This is a tasteful, harmless, gently involving example of paint-by-the-numbers adaptation that pleases all viewers without seriously alienating or truly exhilarating any. B.

Chamber of Secrets-Ah, here we have it, the nadir of the series, a padded, plodding mess that oscillates jerkily between kid-courting whimsy and watch-through-your-fingers violence. It’s the weakest of Rowling’s books, but at least in the novel our blazingly active imaginations could fill in the gaps between the words. Here, what you see is what you get, and what you get is a trio of kids fighting losing battles with puberty and shockingly tacky CGI spiders. There are exactly two saving graces; Kenneth Branagh’s Gilderoy Lockhart, who sets the screen on fire with his unchecked flamboyance, and Richard Harris, whose radiant Dumbledore is great and greatly missed. C.

Prisoner of Azkaban-Alfonso Cuaron does away with the reverential tone of the first two installments, forging a beguilingly bizarre wild ride that thrills even when it skids off the rails every now and then (two words: Knight. Bus.) An essential document of three budding actors blossoming and taking control of the screen, this movie works at a fundamental level on which the first two don’t; indeed, as Harry soars over the grounds of Hogwarts, guided by the wings of Buckbeak and his own swiftly maturing heart, the film series at last captures the ineffable, overwhelming emotional majesty of the books. A-.

Goblet of Fire-Four Weddings and A Funeral proved that Mike Newell got relationships, and he stakes his claim yet again in film numero quatro, deftly handling the romantic roundelays as our heroes experience the first surges of hormonal electricity. He also puts on his action director pants with stunning results; the three Triwizard scenes come off as both exquisitely intricate setpieces and spontaneous explosions of sound and fury. Best of all is Voldemort’s resurrection scene; perhaps the most important sequence in the entire octet, it’s transferred to the screen with all of the dread, awe, and deep, deep sorrow intact. A great book and a very good movie. B+.

Order of the Phoenix-David Yates, who never directed a major studio movie prior to this run, hits the ground running with this breathtaking fifth film. Imelda Staunton and the marvelously malicious Helena Bonham Carter are welcome additions to the cast, and the standby’s carry out their ever-expanding duties flawlessly. The memorable scenes are endless; the Dementor attack, the gathering at Grimwald place, the first class with Umbridge, Harry’s first kiss, Fred and George’s attack, the final duel….Yates orchestrates them all with an eye for detail and a knack for emotional and structural fluidity. A current of true, potent magic flows through this, the best film of the series thus far. A.

Half-Blood Prince-Another expert distillation of what makes Rowling’s books great. More emotional than most melodramas and packed with twice the humour of anything Adam Sandler’s ever made, HBP has it all. By this point in the series, cast and crew alike are so all so good that their work appears to be entirely second nature to them. A decidedly satisfying installment that endears us to these characters more than ever while priming us for what lies ahead….A-.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part I

When it comes to this one, the beginning of the end for one of cinema's most consistently satisfying and mind-bogglingly lucrative franchises, don't believe the hype. By that same token, don't believe the hate. Contrary to the hyperbole perpetrated by the ramped-up Rita Skeeters of film criticism, Deathly Hallows isn't David Yates's career-crowning Empire Strikes Back, but it isn't a horsemen of the cinematic apocalypse out to Hoover-maneuver your hard-earned dough, either. It packs the visceral wallop you'd expect from a finale ultimo, but it lacks the structural fluidity of its two Yates predecessors. Exceedingly exciting setpieces are sandwiched between messily directed scenes that either serve no purpose, or, worse, are flat-out detrimental to the story's momentum. Here's a movie that manufactures wonder after million-dollar wonder, then seems to do its damnedest to undercut it's own successes. Part I is equal parts exhilarating and exasperating, a magical mixed bag, a beautifully designed, emotionally charged mess. If you're turned off by the contradictions in the above sentence, prep yo' ass; this review will be full of them.

The plot sounds deceptively simple, though readers of the book know it to be a study in epic complexity. In short, we have Harry, Ron, and Hermione scouring Europe in search of seven Horcruxes, pieces of Voldemort's soul that most be destroyed before they can kill off aforementioned noseless Nazi. As their search dovetails into a hunt for the titular objects, whose owners can reign over immortality itself, exhaustion, fear, and petty jealousy take hold of our heroes, and their friendship, not to mention the fate of the magical world, stands on the edge of a knife...

Sounds positively Middle-Earthian, doesn't it? But unlike Rowling's detractors, I don't see Hallows resemblance to the Rings trilogy as a negative. Great epic literature, from The Odyssey to the Bible to The Road, hinges on the Journey. Sending characters out into the elements is the ultimate test of our love for them and their love of each other, and I applaud Rowling's decision to follow this tried and true tradition. It's not just Harry vs. Voldemort in book seven-it's Harry vs. the World. Yates's failure to understand this crucial piece of information becomes the picture’s Achilles heel. There’ll be plenty of praise for the movie at the end of this review, but steel yourself, Mr. Potter-you're getting torn to pieces in the next few paragraphs.

Those of you who've read the book know that, like all of the Potter novels (hell, all novels), it is flawed. Rowling never writes a boring sentence, but she has a frustrating habit of including wonderfully written, memorable scenes that do nothing to advance plot or deepen character-take a look at the endless descriptions of food in Sorcerer’s or the Deathday Party in Secrets and you’ll see what I mean. In Hallows, she flounders briefly by including implications of a Harry-Hermione almost-romance and a spitefully jealous Ron. By this point in the canon, both Ron and Hermione are sure enough of their feelings for each other (as is Harry of his attraction to Ginny) that such soap-opera drama comes off as little more than glorified dilly-dallying. It slows down the train-off-the-tracks pacing that’s necessary for a successful race to the finish.

Luckily, Rowling only wastes a few pages on this pointless peccadillo of a subplot. Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves all but make it the heart of the film. This installment starts with a slam-bang opening act-highlights include a profoundly affecting prologue, a white-knuckle wand-duel/dog-fight hybrid, and one of the coolest standalone action sequences in the series, a sort of magical Mission: Impossible break-in. Then, in the middle, it just sort of stops. Our heroes are in a forest, and they sit there. And sit there. And mope. Harry and Hermione flirt. Ron becomes sullen. Hell, emo. The threesome get in an argument that feels so obligatory and blatantly manipulative that you wonder if George Lucas wrote the dialogue on the sly. This whole exercise in lavish stupidity peaks as Ron suffers a hallucination of Harry and Hermione making out in the nude. As I watched the needless display of flesh, the horridly choreographed ballet of brooding and sexual ennui, I felt as if I were viewing an entry in the Twilight series. Why Yates would try to emulate a decidedly lesser franchise is beyond me, as is whether he did so intentionally, but I could bitch-slap him for his decision to expand the book’s flimsiest plot-point in an attempt to satiate the Drooling Over Daniel crowd.

He’s a better director than that.

These are better movies.

The other problem was perhaps unavoidable, but is noticeable all the same. Watching the last couple of entries in the series, readers of the novels probably noticed the missing plot points piling up like names in the Goblet of Fire. “This information is absolutely essential….how will they reveal it?”, we thought to ourselves. The answer? Very awkwardly. All the magic-babble snipped from the previous pictures pops up here, with such frequency and speed that non-readers will probably contract migraines within the first half hour. Characters such as Rufus Scrimgeour and Mundungus Fletcher, introduced earlier in the novels, appear for the first and last time here, receiving so little screen time that they come off not so much as people but as walking pieces of exposition. In a way, Part I is this series’ Personal Jesus, suffering for the structural sins of its predecessors and saving Part II from the hell of excess explanation.

And yet, for all its considerable issues, I ultimate left the theatre satisfied and hungry for more, for several reasons. Firstly, there are the performances, which continue to get better and better; the adult ensemble is stronger than ever, and even when saddled with clunky dialogue, Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson shine, and will continue to soar when interpreting the even more demanding material of the story’s final half. Alexandre Desplat contributes a commendably propulsive score, and Eduardo Serra lends a grimly immersive European palette to the visuals. Scribe Steve Kloves continues to astound in his effortless blending of the enchanted and ordinary world (a well-known Nick Cave song comes on and fits right in).

Best of all, in an ironic twist, while the picture botches some of the most movie-ready scenes in the series, it captures wonderfully an element of the novel that I was dead certain would be lost in translation; the anything-can-happen trepidation that hangs over the story like a mourner’s veil. After Dumbledore’s death in part six, we are left with the distinct impress that no one and nothing is safe. There are evil people, there are ruthless people, and there are good people who will die for no reason. I feared that, after a PG-rated Half-Blood Prince, Yates might step away from the frankness needed for the final part of this story. But Hallows skimps on nothing. From its chilling evocation of the new Totalitarian ministry to its blood-curdling scenes of torture and abuse to the frequent mentions of the dead, dying, or missing, this installment stakes the odds high and mighty against our heroes, and is thus the perfect set-up for what’s sure to be a slam-bang final film. Notice I said perfect set-up. By no means is Deathly Hallows a perfect movie. Still, that unique Potter magic isn’t gone. It’s just sporadic. I expect it to be back and better than ever eight months for now, when this saga of ambition, emotion and sky-high receipts comes to one helluva close. B-.

It Don't Worry Me...

NASHVILLE

Nashville is not the best written film of all time, but it is perhaps the most successful at convincing us that it is not written. Here's a movie bursting at the seams with over 30 characters and jam-packed with at least ten full-length musical performances and almost three hours in length. But yet each individual moment seems startlingly spontaneous; every action these people take seems like an extension of their gloriously idiosyncratic personas instead of a function of the screenwriter's sweaty-palmed desire to move the story along. You'd think Robert Altman's pitiless, perceptive Polaroid of red-state, post-Watergate America would've aged like cheap milk, but, as with many immortal works of art, this one finds astonishing universality in its specificity.

The plot? Non-existent. There's a presidential convention going on in Nashville, and the camera weaves in and out of concert mobs, plants itself in the back of smoke-choked bars, lurks in the corners of sad little hotel rooms and houses, giving us brief, biting vignettes of the people who happen to be in town at the time and what they're up to. Scenes flash past with blink-and-you'll-miss-it brevity-a gospel singer (Lily Tomlin) converses with her deaf son, a whacked-out patriot (Henry Gibson) labors over the production of a trite bicentennial tribute, a gaga BBC reporter (Geraldine Chaplin) ambles around a junkyard mumbling gibberish into her tape recorder, an Opry starlet (Ronee Blake, best in show) has an onstage meltdown and so on. And, thank god, in no way do all these little pieces add up to some soppy sobriquet about how We're All Really The Same (o hai, Crash!)

Of course, infinite praise is due Joan Tewkesbury's screenplay, a marvel of structural ingenuity. It show us the struggles of these sad, strange individuals while addressing the problems that plague our country at large. The storytelling here doesn't mask the social commentary; it is the social commentary. One of my favorite moments in the picture comes at the beginning of songstress Connie White's (Karen Black) Opry performance. Working the crowd, she gives an autograph and a photo-op to a young boy flanking the stage. "Study real hard!", she proclaims, "You can be the next president!" But her ad-lib flops; there's a smattering of golf-clapping and then a moment of devastating silence before she launches into her first song. Within about half-a-minute, Tewkesbury has planted two questions in our head. First of all, what place do Connie and her music-patriotic to the hilt-have in an age of irony and countercultural sprawl? But just after our heart breaks for her, a second thought comes to mind: What's wrong with our country when the phrase "You can be the next president" seems more like a threat than a compliment? Moments like this one abound in Nashville. You find yourself in a pleasant predicament; you want to run out of the theater now now now and discuss these pearls of wisdom with everyone, but you also hope the picture will run forever, will keep getting at more and more of what makes America American and humans all too human.

The other unique aspect of the script is rather sad; it is, to this day, one of the only major Hollywood classics penned by a woman. As such, the film's portrayal of American women is deeper, angrier, and more honest than most any other. Roger Ebert says it best; "They are prized for their talent, their beauty, their services in bed, but never once in this movie for themselves." Tewkesbury gets at a sad truth here. It's not that men don't praise women; even worse, we praise them for the wrong things. We extol their looks, skills, and sensual prowess so often that some of them begin to think those are the only aspects worth improving. Look at Sueleen (Gwen Welles), a talentless singer who hits paydirt because she's willing to strip when she sings. Or Martha (Shelley Duvall), whose all-consuming desire for physical intimacy sidetracks her journey to the sickbed of a dying relative. Or, for Tewkesbury's most piercing evocation of sexual cruelty, watch the film's most famous scene-insolent but ingenious folk-rocker Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) serenades a bar full of women. He has slept with all of them. He loves none of them. They have come because they believe that after the show, he might, just might, take them home. By objectifying their appearances and tuning out their personalities, he has created in them a want that can neither be fulfilled nor forgotten.

If the script's the tinder, Robert Altman's the match. Ah, the Altman Style, perhaps the most distinctive directorial touch in movie history! Not only would he encourage his actors to riff on the written dialogue (causing many a screenwriter many a conniption), but he'd often station the characters (and his camera) in the midst of a crowd, then encourage extras and ensemble members to have in-depth conversations of their own-and talk over the leads! By refusing to a) provide meat-and-potatoes plot-pusher dialogue or b) hone in on one particular exchange, Altman makes you work. You must listen up, you must choose what's important and why. You can watch Nasvhille three or four or five times and focus on different strands of conversation, different people on the fringes of the frame. By broadening the soundtrack and the shot angles, Altman brilliantly refutes the moronic-but-abiding notion that a movie must mean the one thing to all people. The picture is a Homeric odyssey, with you as Odysseus; each viewer has an individual journey, as opposed to the conventional group experience. You know I like a movie that believes in its audience. This picture is one giant cinematic trust fall.

Now that I've devoted a full paragraph of idolatry to Altman, it's time I turned my attention to the cast. Students of performance would be wise to check this one out. I don't know what combination of written word and internal choice was involved, but here are thespians entirely devoid of vanity. Take Blake's work, for example. The role of a country diva collapsing under the enormity of her self-sustained legend offers enormous showboating potential. Instead, as a disturbed person would be more likely to do, she plays her character with the frenzied desperation of someone trying to pass as sane, and when she does lapse into delirium, it is petty and pathetic. There are myriad examples of such note-perfect realism here-by staying true to even the ugliest impulse, these actors endear us to their characters twice as much as if they'd attempt to make them "sympathetic". Appropriate for this tough-love classic, a timeless portrait of tortured souls caught in the sometimes treacherous, sometimes triumphant act of surprising themselves-and us.

Oh, and one more thing. During the making of Nashville, one of the great apocryphal stories of cinematic folklore was born. As Altman geared up to shoot the final scene, he was over-budget, over-drugged, and caught in the midst of a brewing storm. At the end of his rope, he shut off the camera, stretched out his arms, and yelled "STOP RAINING!". The rain, knowing a great director when it heard one, did just that. Or so the story goes.